Systems and methods herein generally relate to automated systems that print, cut, and stack items and more particularly to systems and methods that improve results by providing additional conveyors to make robotic arm movement more efficient.
Complex production devices and systems take raw stock, print on the stock, and cut the stock to produce finished items, such as signage used on store shelves and displays. Such production devices stack the finished output items in specific orders and package such stacks. The sequence of items within such stacks can match any desired order, such as store aisle order (the order in which cards will be attached to store shelves) to allow store workers to have the correct card corresponding to their aisle location within the store when changing signage. Thus, finishing systems can find limitations because of restrictions in item production and stacking sequence requirements.
In one example a robotic system can perform what is called a drop-drop-drop where each of two robots in the same workspace pick three cards at once from a sheet printed 9-up (a sheet cut into 3 by 3 output cards/signs) and then drop the cards in sequence onto a single stack on the output conveyor. However, because the robots are dropping a single item at a time to create a stack of items, even with very fast robots, such robots may not be able to keep pace with the output provided by high-speed printing and patterning devices.